June 23, 2009

The secretary has gone madand chained herself to the copier.When I approached with my memo,she snatched it from my hands,smoothed it onto the glass,slowly closed the cover,and pressed her body against the pulsating machine, flashinglike summer lightning. The touchof my hand would have been an insult,I could see, so I didn’t say a wordwhen she handed me the stack of warm paper. When the custodianlocked up, she was still there,and that’s when they say things gotreally weird. The night watchmanheard moaning that rose into a scream,and then silence. In the morningshe lay dead at the base in a pool of toner, and in the tray --666 copies of what appeared to be lips,surrounded by an almost human face.

A family in Iran whose son was caught and killed in the protests' crossfire Saturday was asked to pay the equivalent of $3,000 for the bullet used by security forces, The Wall Street Journal reports. 19-year-old Kaveh Alipour, who was engaged to marry his fiancé next week, was leaving an acting class when he was shot in the head at an intersection in downtown Tehran. Alipour’s father reportedly told police all of his possessions wouldn’t amount to $3,000. The morgue agreed to waive the fee but ordered that Alipour not be buried in the city of Tehran as retribution. He is one of dozens killed in the violent protests in the last week.